


Sparrowhawk

by foxbones



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, flirting while soaked in the blood of monsters!, this club has everything!, two extremely strong-willed feisty people who are extremely attracted to each other!, using the severed head of a horse as a romantic gesture!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 22:33:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9292331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxbones/pseuds/foxbones
Summary: “Perhaps ye haven’t noticed, bird, but every blossom in Skellige’s got a healthy set of thorns.”“I’ll keep that in mind when I go picking any.”The tale of the Sparrowhawk and her Swallow.





	

**Author's Note:**

> "but what if there was a dlc where ciri was the main character and she has to return to the skellige islands because cerys puts out a contract and there's a banshee and celtic mythology and also they bang a lot and you get a really happy gay ending narrated by dandelion when it's over" - me, three weeks ago
> 
> "i'm going to just write the dlc, fuck it" - me, two weeks ago
> 
> "holy fuck i did it" - me, today

 

 

 

 

**Spioróg**

 

 

 

 

Ciri hasn’t seen her in years - though years sometimes seem different for her, some worlds turning slower, some worlds racing like hares so each day is an hour under the haste of two suns - but it’s not so different to how it was when they were girls. Cerys now sits on the throne at Kaer Trolde, though the only change is her title. She would do the same when she was younger, lounging on her father’s chair with her bare feet slung over the arm, tugging on a loose tooth as she turned the pages of a book. Ciri remembers when she and Hjalmar would find her like that, stomping into the feast hall with their hair full of thorns or twigs or the dust of the smith’s yard, receiving a glare from the too-small occupant of the throne. Cerys still looks at Ciri the way she did then, narrow-eyed and impossible to read. Ciri still feels that gaze like a knot in her throat.

They’re leaning over the rail of the bridge to Kaer Trolde, a guard placed on either end. Introductions an hour ago were strange, brief, with the sorceresses offering gratitudes, rehearsed and unfelt, and Geralt giving the queen of Skellige the only sincere greeting of the bunch, an unusually warm smile. When Cerys pulled her into a formal embrace, there was a whisper in Ciri’s ear, telling her to meet her at the bridge.

Despite the fact she had walked all the way back to the ship with the others, something had her turn around and walk back up.

Cerys had been waiting for her, still wearing her An Craite tartan, a high fur collar pulled to her cheeks. She’d seen Ciri coming, and she’d grinned that crooked Sparrowhawk grin.

And that, perhaps, had been the start of it. Either way, it felt natural now, recalling the past few years, giving away what they could. When Ciri got to the sunstone, the things she realized she couldn’t share, she’d grown silent. Cerys had laughed into this silence.

“You just missed Hjalmar, you know. I’m sure I won’t hear the bleeding end of it.” She looks at Ciri, those eyes dancing in a familiar way. “My brother was nearly in love with you, the eejit.”

Ciri snorts, remembers a lanky boy with a wild head of hair and limbs that he hadn’t grown into yet, a spray of freckles on his nose that he perpetually rubbed in awkward silence when they were left alone. He only ever seemed able to speak up when they were in the yard, yelling any number of his father’s favorite curses when she outran him or scampered up a higher tree.

“He was sixteen, and I was thirteen. Hardly a romance for the bards.”

“Well, you may have broken his heart when you left. I’d say you broke every boy’s heart in Kaer Trolde. Like sulking dogs they were, carrying on about the girl with the ashen hair.”

“What about you, your highness?”

The redhead smirks, but her eyes betray nothing. “Me? I never carry on.”

“You didn’t miss me?”

Cerys shrugs, looks away across the bridge to the cool lights of the port. Ciri follows her gaze, forgets for a minute that there’s more to the world than dark water and the tang of pine and salt. “It was quieter when you left. I prefer the quiet.”

“That’s not what I hear about the Sparrowhawk.”

“Ah, the lads are jealous. They only _love_ to slander my name.”

Ciri laughs. “You haven’t changed. I remember you knocking Hjalmar in the shins with that wooden sword of yours when he would get on your nerves. He was twice your height and you still took him down.”

“I’ve mellowed of late. You’ll see.”

Ciri tilts her head slightly. _Is that an invitation?_

“I don’t know how much longer we’ll be staying.”

Cerys spreads her hands slightly, a gesture more like a queen and less like the Cerys she remembers. “You and your companions all have rooms here. They are welcome to you, should you want them. Might be more comfortable accommodation than on the water.”

“Ah, I...I have to sleep on the ship, actually. Yennefer’s there, which means Geralt’s there, so I--”

Cerys laughs, a bright earnest bark. “Are all witchers so easily tamed by their women?”

Ciri shrugs, holding down a laugh. This was already a conversation she’d mercilessly teased Geralt about on the voyage. “Witchers tend to go for more... _powerful_ women. Sorceresses and the like.”

“Like queens?” Cerys asks, and Ciri searches her face, finds it as bewilderingly unreadable as ever, just the same knowing grin, the same amused eyes. “Is that what you’ll do, when you’re a witcher? Chase after cunning women on thrones and be the pet of some sorceress?”

“Who says I’ll be a witcher?”

“I do,” Cerys says, not a hint of question in her tone or expression, and oh, she hasn’t changed at all. “Freya’s tits, you’re made for it, aren’t ye?”

“I don’t know that it’s up to me. It’s too complicated.”

Cerys only sighs then, looks the other woman over with an exasperated frown. “I don’t understand outlanders. What have you got in this world except your one life?” 

“It’s complicated,” Ciri says, more firmly this time. 

Cerys looks at her, holds her gaze for just long enough that the silence means something, and then turns away. When she speaks, it’s to the dark water and the stars. “Shall we go to bed, then?”

A knot reforms in Ciri’s throat. She laughs, and then wonders why she’s laughing. “Queens have a curfew?”

“It’ll be dawn soon enough.” Cerys is taking one meaningful step in the direction of the fortress. “I don’t waste a good evening, and this one’s nearly over.”

“Very well,” Ciri says, though the thought of returning to her bed on the ship is not a particularly warm one. If the queen insists, though, back to the ship she’ll have to go. “Farewell, your highness.”

It’s only because of her exceptionally good hearing that she hears the queen when she’s halfway through the tunnel, and Cerys must still be standing on the bridge, watching her go.

“Fáinleog,” Cerys whispers, and Ciri can almost hear the change in her smile’s meaning, the shaking head, all too late realizing her error in reading the invitation. “Ye dense bird.”

 

 

 

 

Cerys sends a messenger down to the docks, asks her to come and say farewell before they go. It’s not that Ciri forgets, but everything happens so quickly and Avallac’h is always there and Geralt is always there and already things are moving, and moving, and Ciri cannot stop them. She has never been able to stop them.

From the shore of Undvik, she can just make out the lights of Kaer Trolde. At night, when she is done pacing the beach, avoiding the stares of the Nilfgaardians, the concerned gazes of Yen and Triss, she climbs the shipwrecks and sits on the overturned shells of their sterns, staring out at the blinking points of white through the mist. She imagines the damp of the keep’s tunnel over her head, how she would walk up the steps to the chambers above the throne and how her feet would make no noise. The stone would be cold, but the freckled flesh under her palms would be so warm.

Geralt finds her in the morning. She notices the new swords on his back, the heavy belt of potions doubled.

“It’s time,” he says, and it is.

Everything stops. And everything begins again, just as the world is wont to do.

 

 

 

 

Then there are three years, and many things happen. Monsters are slain, purses filled and emptied and filled again, sweet-eyed peasant girls kissed under starlight at the edge of ponds filled with the corpses of recently defeated drowners. Ciri learns the new weight of twin swords on her back. Loses a few weeks to a succubus in Novigrad - gets a contract from the wife of a besotted lord, ends up in a bath with a horned beauty braiding her hair. Only when Aneera declares she is going south for the weather does the spell break, and Ciri stumbles back into the harsh light of the city. Zoltan is the one who hands her the contract sent all the way from Ard Skellige, meant for her father.

“And ye’d be sure I’m not bothering himself and herself, off in their love nest,” he says, referencing Geralt and Yen’s very pronounced retirement. “Better you see to it, lass.”

“Wise thinking,” she says, unrolling the parchment, double-wrapped in vellum. She raises an eyebrow at the An Craite tartan, a scrap pressed into the wax of the seal. “From Skellige?”

“From the Sparrowhawk queen herself. Asked for Geralt by name, it seems.”

Ciri’s heart beats a bit faster at that. She scans the parchment, tries to remember the job at hand. “A banshee? Is she serious?”

Zoltan shrugs, hoisting himself onto a stool. “You’ve never fought one?”

“How could I? They’re not real. Made up by the clans to make the rising ones seem important. Lends them legitimacy or something.”

“Looks like you’re fighting a fairy story, then. Have fun with it.”

But Dandelion won’t let her go until she’s had at least a few more rounds, and doesn’t she want to stay at the Rosemary and Thyme another night, and oh, the cabaret’s only just beginning, she can’t possibly take off to cold culture-starved Skellige tonight.

Unlike certain other witchers, Ciri still finds certain diversions irresistible.

 

 

 

 

“I asked for the White Wolf.”

Ciri’s standing in the hall at Kaer Trolde, armor still blood-splattered from the siren she had to kill on the last leg of the voyage, her silver sword smelling faintly of its fishy innards. Cerys is giving her the same look she always has, eyes narrowed, mouth crooked, impossible to unwind into simple, uncomplicated threads. A bird of prey, clutching a red knot. She clears her throat.

“The White Wolf is retired. The Swallow takes his contracts now.”

“A swallow replacing a wolf. That’s one ye don’t hear every day.” But there’s a smile playing there, plain enough for Ciri to see, twisting that sweet scar at the edge of her freckled cheek.

Ciri’s almost certain there’s still blood in the corner of her mouth. She goes to wipe it, sees her hand come away with dark red flakes. She must be worse-off than she thought. “No more unlikely than a peace-loving Sparrowhawk on the throne of the Islanders.”

“I don’t doubt the swallow’s abilities, witcheress.” And there’s something about that title coming from Cerys’ own lips that makes Ciri’s heart sing a little bit. “After all, a wolf can’t fly.”

 

 

 

 

“But it’s _not_ real.”

“Of course it’s fucking real. Do ye take me for a fucking fool? Really think I’d drag you all the way from some plush pillow in Novigrad for a child’s story?”

Ciri’s been seated next to Cerys at dinner, which is more of an unruly feast than an evening meal, and she now feels closer to the heat than ever despite her distance from the actual fire.

“I think we have a different idea of my living situation. A witcher’s not a glamorous path, your highness.”

“Fine,” Cerys says, taking another sip of mead. “A plush bosom, then. I don’t know what you sleep on, Fáinleog, and it’s not my business either.”

Ciri ignores this comment, inhaling through her teeth. “My business is hunting monsters. Real monsters, though.”

“Do you know why I sent for Geralt? Because he was never judgmental.”

“I’m not being judgmental. I’m just being realistic. You want my expertise, here is my expertise - You _may_ have a monster problem. This creature may indeed be haunting Kaer Trolde and it may be targeting you specifically. But it isn’t a banshee. If anyone knows about a monster, it’s a witcher. I’m not telling you off, I’m just trying to explain why I’ll be bringing back the head of a different beast.”

“Outlanders,” Cerys says, rolling her eyes again. “Do I tell ye how to feel about your traditions? Do I lecture about the superstitious northerners and their beliefs? I have heard the ban síde keening. I saw her, the cailleach sitting in the window, weaving her fingers through her hair. Now, are ye going to bring me her head and save one of my family from death, or do I need to do the bleeding job myself?” And at this, the Sparrowhawk brings out a dagger which swiftly finds its way point first into the tabletop. A few heads raise in her directions, then skitter back down once they realize the noise came from the queen.

Ciri doesn’t go back to her room that night. She goes to the window where the banshee was last sighted, and she looks for anything, something, and finds only one long black hair that reeks of death.

The next morning, Cerys is waiting at the door to her quarters.

“I’m going to help,” she says. When Ciri starts to protest, the queen raises one hand. “Clearly ye’ve forgotten our ways. I’ll make sure to be a living reminder.”

 

 

 

 

The scented trail leads her to the ledge of the fortress, a few crow feathers on the stone wall. 

Cerys, ever-present in this investigation, holds a feather between her fingers. “I wonder,” she breathes, and then shakes her head. “Couldn’t be.”

“Couldn’t be what?”

“Do ye not remember the stories my father would tell?”

“Some of them,” she says, sitting on the wall, arms folded as if that could protect her from the swell of feelings in her chest when Cerys meets her eye. “Mostly the ones that gave Hjalmar a fright. Never you, though. You were never afraid of anything. I remember your father loved that.” She exhales. “Seems not much has changed.”

“Enough has changed,” Cerys says, her voice quiet. “His empty chambers, for one thing.”

 _Ah._ Ciri looks at her feet again, twirls a crow feather in her hand. “I always meant to come see you afterwards. He died for me, and...that’s not something I have ever forgotten. I think of it every day.”

Cerys’ tone is firm, distant. “So do I. It isn’t difficult, with reminders in every corner of the place.”

“Cerys,” Ciri says, reaches for her hand, but that hands pulls away and Ciri immediately feels like an idiot. “I’m sorry.”

“‘Tis fine, Fáinleog. We can’t change it now. Couldn’t change it then, either. He would have died on that sword for ye again and again if he could.”

 

 

 

 

Two children go missing from Hov - the contract arrives on a cold morning, her breath visible when she starts gathering her things. A horse with a mane wet as rain has been seen on the outskirts of town, feeding beside the water, racing on swift hooves from one end of the bog to the other. 

“I’m coming with you,” Cerys says, stepping down from the throne when Ciri explains the reason she’s leaving Kaer Trolde.

“That’s not happening,” Ciri says, holding up a hand. “It’s far too dangerous.”

“My father hunted every opportunity he could, and the people loved him for it. I like to do the same, but I’d prefer if the hunted were monsters. Besides, it’s a horse,” Cerys says, smiling knowingly. “With a wet mane and two children missing? Do ye know what that is, witcher?”

Ciri would rather not admit that the monsters she is least familiar with are those that inhabit Skellige, so she bites her tongue, keeps her jaw set.

“A kelpie,” Cerys says. “I’d wager my left hand on it. Not yours, though,” she adds, winking at Ciri. “You’ll need yours. I’m sure you agree, it has many an important task ahead of it.”

The way she smiles, the way she steps past Ciri and gives her that look---

 

 

 

 

The voyage to Spikeroog takes half the day, and the now-routine slaughter of exactly eleven sirens.

The tenth Ciri beheads with a single spin and swing, but the eleventh manages to slice her from shoulder to spine. While she stumbles, twisting to get a sight on it, the blade of a dagger appears through the siren’s neck. A few noisy slices, and the head nearly comes off. It drops, wings crumpling, to reveal the Sparrowhawk herself, blood-spattered and panting.

“Noisy hoors,” Cerys mutters, wiping some of the siren blood from her face.

“Thanks,” Ciri nods, and Cerys helps her to her feet, notices her wincing at the sting of air against her open wound.

“You’re hurt worse than I thought,” the queen says softly, and Ciri finds herself being set carefully onto the deck, gentle hands at her back. “You’re lucky you’re a witcher, bird. This wound would have killed anyone else.”

Ciri takes note of the use of her old nickname, the one they’d given each other as children.

“Does it hurt much?” Cerys asks, and Ciri grunts in response, pretending the siren’s venom has not left a particularly searing pain in her spine. Cerys smirks. “Of course, bird. Barely a scratch. You’re very tough and strong, aren’t ye?”

Ciri rolls her eyes at the teasing, but there’s nothing insincere in the way Cerys helps her off the boat, Ciri’s arm slung over her shoulder, nor when she places her on her bed in Svorlag.

 

 

 

 

Ciri wakes wrapped with a fresh bandage, and Cerys’ arm around her waist. She stirs, a hand to her chest, noticing that nearly all the pain is out of the wound. A witcher’s recovery, thank the gods. 

There’s a yawn behind her, movement as Cerys wakes. Ciri turns, catches the queen turning red and bashful. Ciri’s in her bandage and trousers, but Cerys is in a shift beneath their furs, and both seem very aware of it.

“Sorry,” Cerys breathes. Her arm is now being held at her side, oddly stiff.

Ciri shakes her head, bites down on her lip. “It was nothing,” she says, though that’s hardly true.

The truth is that Cerys had helped her take off her armor last night, and tended to her wound, and summoned the village healer to fret over her until he was sent out into the inn’s main hall. Ciri remembers being perched on the edge of the bed, wincing into each painful breath, and Cerys kneeling before her. She remembers thinking it so strange in that moment, a queen on her knees, a queen looking at her with her eyes full of...but what were her eyes full of then?

“D’ye mind?” Cerys had asked, one hand on the laces of her bloodied gauntlets, and Ciri had shaken her head. No, she did not mind.

Piece by piece of her armor had been removed, and when she was down to her shirt, knowing from the cold clinging of blood at her back that it would need to be removed, too, she saw Cerys pause.

“I’m sorry,” Cerys had said, her fingers tentative on the fabric. “We’ll have to take this off as well.” There’d been a slight struggle as the dried blood had unstuck itself, the shirt coming away with a crack. “I don’t know why I’m nervous,” Cerys had said quietly, her voice strange and low. “We were practically raised as sisters.”

The pain in her chest had turned to something else, and Ciri had focused on her breathing, not daring a glance at the other woman. “Do you see me as a sister?”

“No,” Cerys had said, too quickly, and the shirt was gone.

Now it is the morning, and when she pulls back the furs they slept under she can still feel the warmth left from the arm that had been draped over her waist, the heat of the other woman where she had been pressed against her back.

“We should get going,” she says. “It’s a decent ride to the bog.”

“Are ye well enough?” Cerys asks, and there’s something more to her tone, a carefulness, a spark, but Ciri knows better than to consider it.

“I’m fine,” she says, wiggling her fingers and smiling for effect. “Fresh as a beggartick blossom.”

Cerys snorts. “Are those the weeds you trample at home?”

Ciri grins, perhaps a little too cocky. “You probably wouldn’t like to hear about the weeds I’ve trampled, your highness.”

There’s a swat to her unharmed shoulder, though, and the queen is rolling her eyes.

“You’re very bold.”

Ciri stretches, her eyes still on Cerys. “No weeds in Skellige, though. Only blossoms.”

“Perhaps ye haven’t noticed, bird, but every blossom in Skellige’s got a healthy set of thorns.”

“I’ll keep that in mind when I go picking any.”

“You’re a herbalist now?”

“Witchers need potions.”

“Witchers seem to need a great deal of things. More than most humans, I’ve heard.” The queen smirks. “In fact, I was once told by a very reliable source that they only seek out the most powerful women.”

Ciri may or may not be blushing. “I don’t know about that.”

Cerys is getting to her feet, all the furs pulled around her like a cape. She gives Ciri a look over her shoulder before going to the door. “Ah, but I think you do, bird.”

 

 

 

 

Ciri smells the entrails of the children on the banks of the pond. She holds up a hand to Cerys, standing on the road with their horses.

“Don’t come any closer,” she warns, circling the ground until she finds the blood stains and the tiny ropes of intestines, shining organs arranged on the wet shore. She wrinkles her nose. Some things will never lose their bite and break.

Hoofprints leading into the water. The stench of blood, saltwater, bog. Ciri recalls the book on kelpies she’d taken with her from Kaer Trolde, the tales of the horse that steals children.

“I was right, wasn’t I?” Cerys calls, and Ciri can hear her stepping down towards the water.

“I said---” Ciri starts, but it’s too late. Cerys makes a noise when she sees all the carnage, laid out so neatly as if for a still life, and stumbles. Ciri catches her, helps her back up the bank.

“Freya,” Cerys whispers, still shaking slightly. “I’ve seen my share of bloodied things, but never...not to children, not like that.”

“I know,” Ciri says. “It’s horrible, no matter how many times you’ve seen it.”

“You’ve seen something like that before?”

“Worse, if you can imagine. Doesn’t make it any easier this time.” She looks up at the sun, gauging how many hours of sunlight they have left. “I have a plan, but you’re not going to like it.”

The Sparrowhawk crosses her arms. “Try me.”

 

 

 

 

“Are ye out of yer fucking mind?”

“I _told_ you that you weren’t going to like it.”

The full moon is heavy in the night sky above them, lighting the bog with a pale glow. On the bank above the pond, a group of An Craite warriors stand as awkward witnesses to a squabble below. The witcheress, it appears, has removed all of her weapons, and is wading into the water in a shirt and trousers. Sparrowhawk appears to have a lot to say about this, as she is shouting at a great volume.

“If you’re meant to be the bait, what the fuck am I meant to do?”

“Nothing,” Ciri says, trying to concentrate on the sounds around her, to little avail. “I’m the bait and I’m the one who kills it.”

A frustrated sigh. “Sure, ye can’t possibly be serious.”

“Would you rather I had used a child to lure him in? Another witcher would have, I can tell you that much. Most would have thought nothing of buying a child from a peasant and tying it to a stake next to the bank and sitting in the reeds without a care in the world. Would you like me to walk back up to Hov and exchange a little boy for a purse? Because that’s the only other way.”

This seems to give Cerys pause, at least for a moment. She sets her jaw again, hands on her hips. “Fine,” she says. “But you’re an absolute eejit.”

Ciri shrugs, pretending she isn’t even a little bit nervous about this half-arsed plan. “Honestly, my chances of dying are only fifty-fifty.”

Cerys groans, steps into the water, and kisses Ciri firmly on the mouth.

“That’s in case ye end up drowned or murdered in this goddess forsaken bog,” she says, climbing back up the bank and leaving Ciri to stand waist-deep in the fetid pond, jaw slightly askew. “That way I won’t spend my life wishing I’d had the stones to do it, and ye can go to a watery grave with a decent kiss on your lips.”

 

 

 

 

An hour later, and the pale headless corpse of a kelpie is floating on one end of the pond, while Ciri’s emerging from the water, dragging its head by its mane. She drops it at the feet of the queen, her band of warriors, and most of the population of Hov. She’s shaking slightly in the freezing air, dripping pondwater and scum and black kelpie blood.

“Do I get another?” she croaks, after spitting up a good deal of pond sludge.

“Another what?” the queen asks, eyebrow raised.

“Another kiss.” She nudges the kelpie head with her toe in order to make a point.

The Sparrowhawk gives her a oneover, arms still firmly crossed, but she smirks with approval. “Take a few baths and we’ll see.”

 

 

 

 

“Has anyone ever killed a banshee before?”

They are sailing back to Ard Skellig, Spikeroog and the rising sun behind them. Ciri leans against the prow, the queen seated beside her. There is an easy intimacy to their closeness now, not as careful as before, not as afraid.

“No,” Cerys says. “Most see it as disrespectful. They’re sacred to the clans, tied to us by the oldest blood. Killing your own is an affront at the least.”

“Surely your people will have something to say about that.”

Cerys snorts. “Trust me, bird, they already have.”

“So why go through with it? Or why hire me to do it for you?”

Cerys goes quiet for a moment, a hand tight on the side of the ship. “My father heard her keen for my mother before she died, the day of my birth. I never heard her when he died, but perhaps it was your Wild Hunt and all, maybe I couldn’t hear her. I’ve lost too much, bird. My brother is all I have left, and I’m all he has left. Why she’s come for my clan so many times I do not know, but I will not have her visit us again.”

“You can’t stop death, Cerys.”

“No,” the queen says, her eyes on the horizon. “But sure, I can slow her down. She’s been too greedy. She’s fat off our blood. I’ll let her starve a little longer at least.”

 

 

 

 

Hjalmar still smiles like a teenage boy, bashful and reckless at the same time. “And here I was afraid of you with only one sword,” he says, nodding at the two swords on her back. “You were a little terror back then. You must be the scourge of the world now.”

She hugs him. He has a wife now, a son only a few months out of the cradle. He is still strange to the islanders, tied up in his own ways, but his sister keeps him busy and thus his honor hasn’t suffered yet. And she missed him, in his oversized, messy way of being. They sit in the hall of his house, a fire crackling in the pit.

“I know Cerys wants to kill the ban síde.” He takes a drag of his carved pipe, a relic she remembers his father smoking from when they were children. “I know why she wants to do it, but I can’t see how any good will come of it. When she howls for us, we have to heed her call. No stopping it. She’s not the kind of monster you can hang off your saddle, do ye understand? She’s old as the clan and she’s not a beast can be slaughtered.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Hjalmar gives her a crooked smile, not too unlike his sister’s, though his is earnest and a bit silly where hers is cunning and too-quick. “Has she gotten to ye, too? Cerys thinks she could take on the emperor himself if it came to it. She fears nothing, not even death. And our ban síde, she’s death. Have no doubts about that.”

“I’ve a contract. I’ll complete it, one way or another.”

“So she _has_ gotten to ye.” His smile changes, grows wider. “That’s Sparrowhawk. She’ll have a witcheress murdering the moon for her in no time, just so the queen can enjoy the daylight.”

His wife is rocking his son to sleep, singing an island song. Ciri watches, listens.

“I know death comes for one of us,” Hjalmar says, his eyes on his son. “Only, I hope it isn’t for my boy. I hope she’s keening for me, the ban síde, and I hope she lets me go in glory.”

 

 

 

 

There is a soft knock to Ciri’s chambers. She’s preparing swallow potions on the floor, sitting cross-legged with the ingredients around her. 

The Sparrowhawk is standing at the door when she opens it, noticeably without her guards. She leans forward, sniffing the air beside Ciri’s neck, her mouth close enough that Ciri can feel her breath on her jaw.

“Ye don’t smell like a bog anymore,” she says.

“Hopefully not. It took three lovely washerwomen to scrub it out of me.”

“Lucky them,” Cerys says, cocking her head. “Perhaps you should ask one of them to attend to you this evening.”

“They were Yennefer’s age,” Ciri says, laughing, and then adds when she sees Cerys’ expression: “Without her illusion powers.”

“Some say the finest blossoms are the oldest on the bush. All the prickles have fallen off.”

Ciri takes a step back into her room, the queen following. “I prefer lots of thorns,” she says.

“Do ye favor a color?”

“Red.”

And while they do knock over a few bottles of alcohest, wasting most of her supply of spirits, it is entirely worth her needing to bargain with a merchant at the docks the next day, the skin beneath her armor well-spotted with bites and bruises and long scores of nails down her back.

 

 

 

 

A storm rocks the island for three days, until finally, a crow appears from the clouds and flies into the hall of Kaer Trolde.

“Ceann Caillí,” it sings, fixing a beady eye on the queen, and then disappears.

Ciri turns to Cerys. “Please tell me you understood that.”

But the queen only looks more determined than ever. “She won’t come to us, then. The ban síde wishes us to come to her.”

 

 

 

 

On a steep ascent known to the locals as Hag’s Head, Ciri is bracing herself against the rain and thunder. Behind her, the queen of Skellige has her hand on the hilt of her dagger, and the other on the witcheress’ shoulder. On the path below, Cerys’ warriors and shieldmaidens wait anxiously, despite Ciri’s protests that they accompany them at all.

“Go back,” Ciri yells over the sound of the storm, hair and water whipping into her eyes. “Make yourself scarce, quickly.”

But Cerys is clearly not going anywhere. “I won’t run from her, bird.” Behind her, a standing stone is lit by their shadows in a lightning strike. “Not today.”

But there is no banshee, not in that moment. Instead, it is a crow that descends from the thunderous heavens, and lands at their feet as an old woman with long stringy hair, and then as a dark-headed maiden.

“The Mórrígan,” Cerys breathes, stepping in front of Ciri, and the maiden smirks at them.

“Spioróg,” she says, and her voice is three women’s at once, a trio of thunderous noise. “I wished to see you with my own eyes.”

Ciri glances down the path - every warrior and shieldmaiden are on their knees, heads bowed.

Cerys is breathing hard; Ciri can feel her against her chest, her arms still pressed against Ciri’s to hold her back. “I thought ye came for my life.”

“You are under my protection, Spioróg, until I decide to claim you.” The Mórrígan smiles. “But that won’t be for a very long time. I would not waste you on the next realm yet.” Now she looks at Ciri. “Fáinleog,” she says, nodding. “You would know all about the ties of fate. To think you are tied to my queen. Mortal life is full of spit and spark, isn’t it? The knots ye tie without your intent are the strongest knots of all.”

The maiden becomes a crow, and alights for a moment on Cerys’ shoulder. And then she is gone, and the storm is calm, and the warriors of An Craite are getting to their feet, mumbling in shock and awe.

“Our queen is blessed, so she is.”

“The Mórrígan herself. ‘Tis nothing short of a miracle.”

Cerys is shaking against Ciri. Ciri steadies her, a tentative hand at each side of her waist, and then lets herself hold her there, a queen in the arms of a witcheress.

 

 

 

 

Word spreads quickly. By the time they’re back at Kaer Trolde, every peasant on the island is lining the roads. Cerys rides beside Ciri, eyes on the fortress above them.

“I’m sorry ye didn’t get to behead a ban síde,” she says quietly. Ciri snorts, eyes dropping to the reins in her hand.

“I’m sorry I doubted you.”

“Well,” Cerys says, finally meeting her eye. “I was wrong, in a way.”

“Not entirely wrong. Nearly right, in fact. Seems you’ve got a goddess on your side.”

“She’s our phantom queen,” Cerys explains. “Fate and death and the warring of our people, that is her domain. Freya protects birth and fertility and love, and the Mórrígan protects that which she detests.”

“And she’s real as rain.”

“Are you surprised?” Cerys raises an eyebrow. “I’d think with all you’ve seen, after the Wild Hunt and the worlds you’ve traveled---”

“Nothing comes as a surprise to me anymore. Particularly not the case of you being favored by a goddess herself.”

“Don’t try to ease your way into the queen’s graces, bird.”

Ciri smiles to herself, catches the Sparrowhawk’s smirk. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

 

 

 

 

And then there are more years, and Ciri comes to know the voyage from Novigrad to Ard Skellige by heart. Knows the loneliness of the Continent, the shortage of work and the shifting of kingdoms like dice and the dying monsters under her heel. Knows the familiar warmth of the Rosemary and Thyme, having to politely refuse Dandelion’s introductions to eligible young men and women until he extracts her secret with strategic erveluce and knowing questions. Knows the welcome heat of Toussaint, long nights on the balcony with Geralt, swapping tales of scars and beasts, carefully inquiring as to the nature of powerful women, carefully extracting advice. Knows long afternoons with Yennefer, wine and gardens and talking of love, true love, how one knows they’ve found it once it’s there.

Most of all, knows the smell of the docks beneath Kaer Trolde, and the long climb to the fortress under starlight, and the tapestries above Cerys’ bed: the impossible complications of golden knots, embroidered hounds and beasts curling into each other like poetry.

And there are many days, such as this:

 

 

 

 

Her ship gets in from Novigrad just before nightfall. On the walk up to Cerys’ chambers, Ciri comes across a massive warrior with an axe harnessed to his back, down on hands and knees at the door to the tower, calling for a cat. When he sees her coming, his high cheeks flush pink, but he continues cooing for the animal as if his life depends on it.

Cerys is in her room, her hair down from its braids, hands on her hips. 

“Pangur Bán has run off to the tower, won’t come down. Y’know I can’t keep a cat because of ye? Somehow you manage to scare them all off.”

Ciri drops her swords at the end of the bed, already unlacing her gauntlets. “Men, too.”

The redhead smirks. “That’s true. Can’t keep one of those around either. Seems none of them want to cross a witcheress.”

“Why’s that?” There’s an extra pair of hands helping her with the rest of her armor. She untugs her hair from its braid. “I don’t mark you like a dog. You don’t belong to me.”

Cerys snorts. “No, bird. But you may well belong to me.”

 

 

 

 

“They’re saying you need to take a husband.”

From the bath, Cerys rolls her eyes. “Who’s ‘they’? My fucking clansmen?”

Ciri shrugs, her steel sword balanced against her thigh, cleaning it with a rag she inherited from a shirt that did not survive a griffin attack. “I listen what I’m about. It’s part of my job. Some are saying it’s more than time you married. They think the Sparrowhawk is bold not to give heirs to the clan.”

“Hjalti can throw his spear in when the time comes,” Cerys says, referring to her young nephew, Hjalmar’s son. “There’s An Craite blood if they feel so precious about it.”

“You wouldn’t be an awful mother, you know. Probably would be good for your image, aligning yourself with Freya, raising some red-haired little whirlwind.”

“Where am I meant to get one? Are you offering to steal an orphan for me? I know your kind are quite good at it.”

Ciri ignores that particular remark, concentrating instead on the cleaning of her blade. “Take a husband, Cerys.”

A finger rises from the bath, gesturing threateningly. “Tell me what to do again, witcheress, and I’ll throw you off the bridge.”

Ciri smirks. “Easier said than done, your highness. You’ll find swallows can fly.”

“Yes, bird. You and your magic.” Cerys’ frown is curling at the edges, betraying a smile. “Eejit bird.”

“Eejit with two swords.”

“And two hands,” Cerys smirks knowingly. “Aye, two very good hands.”

“Don’t change the subject, your highness.”

But somehow she’s unlacing her trousers and stumbling into the bath anyway, grinning like the eejit she is.

“You need a proper bath, like the ones on the Continent, big enough for both of us” she says, her muscles aching when they hit the water. “And that salve they’ve been peddling lately, too.”

“A salve? We’ve got plenty of those here.”

“There’s on they’re selling on every corner in Novigrad now. Business for healers is booming since Radovid’s been long dead.”

“I wouldn’t know.” Cerys says, her back to Ciri, tucked up to her chest and under her chin. “I’ve never been.”

“You’re not serious.”

“I’m not taking the piss. I’ve never been off the Islands.”

“But do you want to go?”

“I’m a queen,” she says, her tone even. “I cannot leave my people, not when we are becoming a people without raids.”

“I’ll take you,” Ciri says, something swelling in her throat. “I promise I will. Someday, you and I will see everything there is to see.”

Cerys laughs at this, low and warm. She leans back against her witcheress, a hand reaching up to cup her jaw. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, bird. I’m happy enough right here in a too-small bath.”

 

 

 

 

_The Sparrowhawk never took a husband. The witcheress was often seen in Kaer Trolde, climbing to the chambers of the queen, or slipping naked into the hot springs with a redhead, An Craite warriors standing watch with their backs turned. Even the White Wolf made a few appearances in the islands in the years to come, accompanied by a sorceress making strange demands of her lodging, both of them giving the queen friendly and hearty embraces._

__

__

_When Hjalti an Craite, son of Hjalmar an Craite, first of his name took the throne after his aunt, it was said that the Sparrowhawk was seen leaving the islands on a ship bound for Cintra. Rumors would return to Ard Skellig of a proud redhead accompanied by a witcheress, riding through the Northern Kingdoms, or drinking in the terraces of Toussaint. Never without the ashen-haired woman, it was said that she saw every corner of the Continent, and only returned to Ard Skellig many years later, when her ashes flew over the water beneath Kaer Trolde, mixed with those of a witcheress._

 

 

 

 


End file.
